Non-Traditional Threat to the Country - Admission/Application Essay Example

Non-Traditional Threat to the Country As with any issue in international relations, there is no universal approach that can be effectively provided to each and every situation that might arise. Addressing the above question, the reader can adequately note that certain non-state threats can effectively be unilaterally addressed; whereas others may not. As a means of understanding this and seeking to define this issue to a greater and more complete degree, the following discussion will provide unique examples of non state actor threats that can be addressed unilaterally and non-unilaterally; as well as specific threats and issues that might be extant within such a situation. Furthermore, a focus on the problems and issues that cooperation might bring will also be discussed. It is the hope of this author that such a unit of analysis will help to more accurately represent the approaches that states can make with non-state actors and better define the mechanisms through which unilateral engagement serves as a viable approach and the situations in which it can potentially fail to address key non-state actor threats. Moreover, by understanding the failures and breakdowns in cooperation that might occur, the reader can also denote the hardships that engagement in seeking to leverage change to a particular non-state actor threat might exhibit. Firstly, the example of a transnational diaspora community will be engaged. Although there is a litany of such groups throughout the globe, this particular example has been utilized due to the fact that there is a high potential for such a non-state actor to place pressure and seek to effect change in national policies, resource allocation, or land distribution. Such desires create an immediate threat to a state and require them to respond as a function of seeking to define and defend their own direct and territorial sovereignty. This serves as a direct example of a non-state actor threat that can be addressed best with unilateral action; due in part to the fact that third party intervention is likely to decrease the overall utility of the state to address the issue and leverage a more politically expedient solution that would not affect the overall best interests of the state in question. However, not all non-state actor threats can or should be addressed unilaterally; some require engagement with other states as a function of adequately leveraging more resources, stakeholders, and solutions to effect. An exhibition of one such case in which international partnership should be utilized is that of how the non state actors of terrorist groups should be dealt with utilizing a diverse cooperation between governments. Within such a paradigm, it can easily be seen that the terrorist groups have little to no regard for international boundaries and might merely be leveraging such technicalities as a cover for performing more acts of terrorist and harming more civilians. Taking the case of the FARC rebels, Colombia has seen first-hand what a unilateral approach to such groups effect. As Colombia began engaging with FARC and treating it as an internal separatist group, the potential for outside help was immediately shunned and FARC quickly came to adopt a more transnational approach by simply crossing borders and leveraging friendly communities in neighboring countries to base their logistics and future attacks. Although the relations with neighboring Venezuela were far from cordial, Colombia could have experienced a far better outcome had they chosen to engage with FARC in a cooperative manner and sought out other nations to constrict their movements, arrest their leaders, and otherwise disrupt their operations. With this being said, there are obvious problems to non-unilateral engagement of the given case in question. Firstly, as has been listed, the overall relationship between Colombia and Venezuela has been less than warm for decades. As such, a purely cooperative agreement between the two would be unlikely unless policy makers within Bogota were familiar with how to incentivize the process to achieve Venezuelan support. Additionally, as both nations would be pursuing different goals for different reasons, the overall outcome will necessarily be different than Colombia would have likely achieved in the event that it went out the situation alone. Such externalities are not contingent solely upon the situation that has been defined; rather they serve as a warning and harbingers of potential disaster for all cooperative engagements with non-state actors. Question 2: What are the most important differences between the Kent and Kendall (Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949) visions of intelligence? Why are these differences so important and worth discussing? Which vision might be most applicable today and why? With nearly all nations engaged in intelligence efforts, the approach that intelligence gathering uses as its underlying rubric and goal serves to be of great importance to helping to define the mechanisms and manner through which such an agency engages the external environment. In 1949, a debate between Kent and Kendall served to provide a fundamental differential of approach with respect to the way in which intelligence gathering should take place. As a means of defining this differential and more effectively understanding it, the second portion of this two part analysis will focus on the differences that are represented by Kent and Kendall as well as the vision of intelligence that each sought to promote. Further, a discussion of why these differences are important and worth discussing alongside which vision this particular student believes to be the most applicable will be discussed. Firstly, Kent’s model is one that represents the consumers and the producers of intelligence as being locked in a symbiotic relationship. However, he denotes that the institutional dependence that these two have upon one another is prone to create a situation in which the quality of the intelligence decreases and is likely to decrease in relevance, scope, and applicability. As such, Kent promotes that engagement with policymakers and providing institutional oversight by academics is one of the main mechanisms through which the quality of the intelligence can be improved. By means of contrast and comparison, Kendall had something of a different approach. Rather than accepting Kent’s inclusion of “bureaucratic scholarship” within the intelligence community as a de-facto need, Kendall instead denotes the fact that the “educated” experts did not have a place as middle-men in the intelligence process. Instead, Kendall denoted that intelligence by its very nature was determined for consumption by policymakers that were already educated and could draw informed decisions based upon the use and application that they saw the intelligence pointing towards. As can be noted, Kendall’s approach is one that reduces the overall oversight and engagement that intelligence is expected to have with other stakeholders and reduces the process to a basic commodity fulfillment between intelligence producers and intelligence consumers. Naturally, Kent did not envision a situation in which discussion and democratic principles would reduce the efficiency and timeliness of intelligence between the producers and the consumers; however, he did seek to create a more informed level of continual progress and change that would effectively ensure that a better product was delivered. The difference between these two points of view is still well worth consideration. The reason behind this has to do with the fact that the differences that each of these men represent ultimately serves to define the heart of what intelligence is and how it is consumed; as well as the quality of decisions that can be made from it. Further, it is the view of this particular student that the era requires a further engagement with the Kent model. Part of the rationale behind such a broad pronouncement is predicated on the intelligence oversights and failures that have been exhibited over the past several decades. Although intelligence oversights are common, regardless of the program in question, the scope and size of the failures that have been represented over the past several decades are so glaring and egregious that a further level of bureaucratic scholarship is absolutely required as a means of decreasing the potential for such oversights to be represented again in the future. The case of Iraq and the incorrect intelligence that led the nation to war over perceived Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) serves as a prime case in point. Without a level of informed and scholarly oversight into the intelligence process, the degree and extent to which policy makers will incorrectly infer meaning from intelligence reports and potentially make decisions that affect tens of thousands of lives over the course of many years would necessarily be decreased. Although the Kent model is somewhat idealistic in its interpretation and application, such idealism is one of the only mechanisms through which the existing structure can be improved and the value of the intelligence that is produced can be positively impacted. Sadly, the case of the Iraq War serves as yet one indication of the means by which the “best guesses” of the intelligence community have been inferred as verifiable fact by policymakers and acted upon accordingly. Read More